


Howard Stark and the Indestructible Paint Job

by Darkwood_Princess



Series: To Dust or To Gold [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Howard Stark is going to take on Hydra, Howard Stark is not painting that stupid shield again, Howard and Peggy are bros, Night Terrors, With Nothing But Experimental Paint, albeit a big one, howard thinks of steve as a little brother, if they touch his baby again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 22:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10319147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkwood_Princess/pseuds/Darkwood_Princess
Summary: The first time Steve needs the shield repainted, Howard hopes it's a fluke. The 27th Time, he knows he needs stronger paint. And then some Hydra punk tags his baby and Howard is ready to go to war. Featuring a genius with sleep problems and the people he cares about.And Paint. Lots and Lots of Paint.





	

**Author's Note:**

> If there are errors, please have mercy, I've only seen the First Captain America movie, the first episode of Agent Carter, and the Avengers in regards to characters mentioned. Howard (and Peggy and Steve and the Howlies) managed to make an impression on me and, after a conversation with my sister on the subject of Cap's paint job, I give you the following.

**"Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time . . . ?" -** _**Ray Bradbury "Something Wicked This Way Comes"** _

He cannot sleep.

Not that Howard Stark has ever really had a kind and loving relationship with Morpheus. His brain moves too quickly, mind popping off ideas often faster than he can keep up with them, making powering down a proposition of sometimes enormous magnitude. Howard’s life has been one never ending parade of new inventions at odd hours and lovely women to occupy what’s left over. He’s always had a touch of insomnia in his life.

This is not insomnia.

The first time he wakes up on the floor it is a curiosity and a sprained leg, nothing more or less and most definitely caused by the nightmare he’d just had. A brain as complex as Howard’s could crunch the infinite permutations of reality and easily do the calculus for how quickly he could have died the day Captain America was born. Abraham Erskine was a good friend and not a day goes by that Howard doesn’t miss him and his odd sense of humor. The nightmare was horrifying but manageable.  He is, after all, still alive.

The second time it is Peggy who has been shot and he is screaming in his sleep so loudly that his neighbor complains to Colonel Phillips about his afterhours activities, never mind the fact that he did not sound _remotely happy and the only one screaming was him_.

(He tries not to look too affronted when Phillips chews him out, claiming that genius civilian or not, he’d throw him off the base if he cost his men their lives over some fling of his. Howard soundproofed his room that very night.)

The third time it is Steve who is shot, bleeding out in front of him and something in Howard’s mind yells _run, run, they’re after you_ and  _Steve and Peggy and Abraham oh God_ and _NoNoNoNo._ He is out of the covers and across the floor, slamming open his door and out into the hallway, barreling straight into a very surprised Peggy Carter, just now dragging herself off to some well-deserved rest of her own.

Papers go everywhere and Howard lands on has backside rather ungracefully, thrown into wakefulness by the harsh hall lights and a very concerned Peggy who’s staring at him as if he’s gone around the bend.

( _He wonders, darkly, if the old adage is true. That there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. Perhaps he’s finally crossed that not-so-distant event horizon.)_

He wants to lie glibly, to tell her that there’s an invention he must really be attending right now, so sorry for the interruption, but one glance at her shrewd expression has him telling her the truth as she ushers him back into his room. Any other time he would have made some asinine comment about her being within ten feet of his bed, but now all he feels is drained as she pushes him into a chair at his own table and brews him a cup of tea, patiently waiting for the confession.

It comes out in a rush of _You-And-Steve-And-Abraham-Were-Dead_ and _What-IF-it-Had-Been-Me_ and _My-Legacy-Is-War-And-That’s-Terrible_ and when he gets to _I’m-So-Weak-You-Must-Hate-ME_.  Peggy slams her hand on the table and lectures him to within an inch of his life about his self-worth while he presses the heels of his hands against his eyes trying to stem back the too hot tears prickling under his eyelids. He is an emotional man, Howard, but he doesn’t want Peggy to see him cry and she doesn’t comment on it, merely telling him that if he needs to talk, her door is always open.

He spends the next few weeks working as late in the lab as possible and installs even stronger locks on his doors. It doesn’t stop the night terrors from coming but at least no one is being hit by a ball of scared witless inventor at the odd hours of the morning.

(Peggy is watching him more carefully now, but she keeps his secret and he is immensely grateful for it. He has a reputation after all.)

This is how he finds himself staring at the shield Steve has chosen, the Vibranium shining beautifully in the lights of his laboratory at just past 3 in the morning. Whimsy tends to strike those who are up past the natural lengths of their endurance, and Howard is no exception.

He grabs the appropriate paint from a special stock he’d brought along for projects to make himself happy, not realizing the enormous task of aiding and abetting an army. The paint has sat for almost too long to be of use, but Howard wouldn’t be worthy of being called a genius if he wasn’t able to extend the shelf life of fancy paint by a few months at the very least.

When Peggy Carter comes to check on him the next morning, as she has made an effort to do whenever she gets a few spare minutes, she finds him passed out at his workbench, an incredibly patriotic shield lying right next to him.

When Steve sees it, his whole face lights up as if Howard has pulled the moon out of the sky for him. The other Howlies are just as dazzled, and Howard has to refuse Dernier’s request for grenades painted in the colors of France at least six times in ten minutes.

(When the man pouts, he almost gives in. Almost.)

Phillips merely snorts at the idea of a star spangled shield and sends the Commandos out on a mission.

When they return and a sheepish Steve shows Howard the damage that a new Hydra weapon has done to his detailing, Howard grimaces and touches it up with the least amount of paint possible. Maybe it would be a one-time problem.

When Steve visits him a couple more times, Howard starts working on a better paint. It works for a little while, lasting for up to five missions where the previous ones had lasted about half of one. He thinks that maybe after this stupid war is over, someone might want a durable paint.

( _The nightmares are now full of crashing planes and dying Commandos and bright, bright blood and Howard wonders if maybe, just maybe he’s going mad. And so he tinkers and he invents and the Allies almost discover one of his “Bad Babies” before he sets the tiny paper on fire, unwilling to unleash the Pandora’s box of his mind on the world. The suspicious look in Phillips eyes as Howard knocks the paper into the fire, claiming it was merely scrap haunts him for several days after. To repent he paints Dernier fifteen grenades and upgrades Morita and Jones’ communications equipment and fixes Barnes’ riffle and  finds Carter and Falsworth some of the best Tea and snags a new liner for Dugan’s dumb hat and Paints.That. Stupid. Shield. For. The. 27 th.TIME.) _

He is burning the candle at both ends intentionally and so when Steve and Peggy and the rest of the Howlies trail in, looking both contrite and wary, he wonders what’s happened and why they’re all here and who’s died.

(He wonders if he’s going to hell for hoping it was Phillips who was dead.)

“Now, Howard,” Peggy’s voice is calming, as if she’s talking to a wounded animal and not a genius whose been getting far too little sleep, “Don’t be too upset. Hydra only had the shield for an hour or so before the Commandos recovered it.”  Steve is staring at his boots, looking for all the world as if he wished the floor would swallow him whole and Howard wonders with a shiver of horror if Hydra has managed to somehow disintegrate Vibranium in a twist both chilling and nauseating for a man whose inventions were like his children. The fact that Bucky is staring steadily at him, challenging him to make his best friend feel worse about the situation than he already is, makes Howard think the shield must really be gone.

When Steve hands him the shield, it is so much worse.

Howard is aware that Steve’s speaking, something about an ambush and a snatch and grab and how he’s so, so sorry. Unfortunately all the inventor can really do is stare in mounting fury at the once beautiful shield.

A hastily but incredibly accurate Hydra Emblem has been painted all over the patriotic paint job.

There are many things Howard keeps to himself. The fact that he can curse in ten different languages is revealed then and there.  His audience is Impressed (Gabe and Jim and Jacques), Disapproving (Montgomery and Peggy), trying Not-To-Laugh (Bucky and Dum Dum) and Terrified (Steve).

When everything he throws at that paint refuses to take it off, Howard goes three days without sleep until _every trace of that stupid emblem_ is gone and he’s invented the most powerful solvent the world has ever seen. He’s smart enough to take a sample of the accursed paint first though and improve on it.

_Take That Hydra Morons. He’d paint them all hot pink and then they’d be sorry and stained for the very short time it would take the Howlies to end their existence._

Steve’s grateful face when Howard returns the shield, newly painted is only outdone by his amazement when the new paint proceeds to _not come off_ for the next few months. When it makes it to the bitter end of Captain America as Peggy and Howard know it, no one can imagine that the shield will look exactly the same in seventy years.

( _Howard cannot know at the time that he will ultimately conquer his nightmares only to fall prey to the things of nightmares, at that moment the grief of losing a good friend heavier than Atlas’ burden.)_

And when Tony Stark gets a good look at the shield in the flesh, he can’t help the laugh that bubbles in his throat, the memory of reading his father’s notes for that very paint, splattered with furious remarks and coffee, still as fresh as the day he was given the records for all of his father’s work.   

Steve, for his part, tells the story when asked, of another time and another Stark , with all the grace and wistfulness of someone so displaced, but with joy too, for if you remember someone they are never truly dead.

His shield, often battered and attacked, shines on.

 


End file.
